Achter de schermen van het stadstoneel. Theaterbedrijf en toneelpolemiek in Amsterdam en Hamburg 1675-1750

The usual delimitation in carrying out literary-historical research still is formed by the political and linguistic unity of ‘the nation.’ For this reason, the regional and local aspects of historical literary developments have long remained underexposed. This is also true for research into German and Dutch theatre history, a field of research explored mainly by literary historians. With the exception of court theatre, public theatre in Germany and the Netherlands between 1675 and 1750 was chiefly centred in an urban environment. The present study concerns a comparison between the theatres of the two most important theatre cities at the time: the Amsterdam Schouwburg and the Hamburg Opera. Their functioning in a contemporaneous urban context provides the focus for an investigation that emphatically does not involve the (later) national significance of the two theatres. The comparison is oriented first of all on the question of which institutions interfered directly and indirectly with the formation of repertoire in the Schouwburg and Opera; and secondly, on the question of what views and considerations, such as emanated by these institutions, underlay the eventual repertoire selection. Conclusions: Both the Schouwburg, an institution of the city, and the Opera, a private company, were wholly related to and entrenched in city life. City administrators, ministers of the clergy, and private investors together determined the repertoire of performances in the two theatres. Naturally, different interests had to be defended and for each city these interests were different again. Some wished to use the theatre in order to radiate political power and authority (city governors, diplomats), others were primarily interested in financial gain (investors), and others again in affirming moral authority in the city community as a whole (the clergy). In all of these cases, however, those concerned with the theatre represented the interests of a city group. Thus, both devising and controlling the theatre’s programme was a concern of city institutions and their representatives. Amsterdam and Hamburg were ‘free cities’ and this did not only affect the governance of the city, but also the city’s cultural institutions. This formed a source of liberty for the city theatres, but they also had to continuously defend their right to exist. In spite of some differences in the way the Amsterdam and Hamburg theatres were embedded in city culture, it will be clear that they were the domain of councillors, clergymen, negotiators, and entrepreneurs. Thus, the city theatre formed a reflection of the dynamics and diversity that would characterise the metropolitan way of life in seventeenth and eighteenth-century international culture.